Here's what makes change so difficult. When change is being required in business or in life, you cannot stop the machinery, make the change and start it up again. Instead, people tend to continue with what is familiar, while adding elements of the changes that are required. At some point they come to realize that the stress of adding new things on top of maintaining all the old things is too much. When this happens, they must make a decision; they have three options. They can refuse the new and say it is just impossible to do; they can try to hold on to both the old and the new and try to manage the increasing personal strain; or they can let go of some of the old in order to grasp more firmly more of the new.

In this, the fifth year of literacy reform implementation, many practitioners have arrived at this point of decision. As we look into the future and see more changes coming, it seems clear that if we are to be successful in serving our learners well, we must begin the process of selecting parts of the old that we can release in order to make room for the new.